For detailed information about this franchise, visit The H.P. Lovecraft Wiki.
“ | The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. | „ |
~ Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu: I. The Horror in Clay. |
Summary
The Cthulhu Mythos, known to Howard Phillips Lovecraft as Yog-Sothothery, encompasses the shared elements, characters, settings, and themes found in the works of Lovecraft and associated horror fiction writers. Together, they form the canon that authors writing in the Lovecraftian milieu have used — and continue to use — to craft their stories. The term "Cthulhu Mythos" comes from August Derleth. Though this legendarium is sometimes called the Lovecraft Mythos, most notably by Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi, it's long since moved beyond Lovecraft's original conception.
The Mythos' central theme is that the human world and humanity's role are illusions; humans exist inside a fragile bubble of perspective, oblivious of what lies beyond the curtains, not even knowing the curtains exist. Humanity's seeming dominion over the world is illusory and ephemeral; humans are fortunate in that we are unaware of what lurks in the dark corners of the Earth and beyond. As Lovecraft famously began his short story, The Call of Cthulhu, "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."
Note: This wiki only considers the works H. P. Lovecraft and his close friends wrote during his life as canonical despite the Cthulhu Mythos now being public domain. Profiles here primarily use Lovecraft's primary writings, with occasional contributions to the Mythos from close friends like Frank Belknap Long and Clark Ashton Smith, and consider the expanded Mythos as non-canonical fan works.
Power of the Verse
As the pioneer of the "cosmic horror" genre, the Cthulhu Mythos is an enormously powerful verse reputed as one of the strongest settings in fiction despite being much older than most prominent verses.
At the bottom of the Mythos's power levels, some more grounded characters and small-scale horrors are human or comparable to humans; a few higher ones are Tier 8 and Tier 7. Great Old Ones, some of the more well-known eldrich horrors, are High 6-B from scaling to Cthulhu causing an earthquake as he slumbers in R'lyeh. Speed-wise, some of these beings are comparable to or slightly faster than humans; others vary from Supersonic with the Wolf-Like Mountains' size, High Hypersonic+ with the Nightgaunts accelerating to a planet's orbiting speed, and Massively FTL+ with the Colour Out of Space flying from the solar system in seconds; the Hounds of Tindalos reach Immeasurable speeds for moving through time. These beings have impressive hax, many holding sway over eldrich magic, exotic biology, psychic powers, space, time, dimensionality, immortality, causality, and other high-end powers.
In the Mythos's higher echelons, it receives a massive power spike with the transcendent realms and deities beyond the infinite multiverse of infinite-dimensional universes. Such beings include the Ancient Ones and Hypnos, who are 1-A from scaling to the trans-dimensional Outer Extension and Dreamlands, respectively, and the Outer Gods, a host of High 1-A entities residing in the nigh-all-encompassing Ultimate Void, among which are the Ultimate Gods, such as Nyarlathotep and Shub-Niggurath. The most powerful beings in the setting are Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth, the Tier 0 twin halves of the godly Supreme Archetype, the animating essence of all existence that subsumes even the Ultimate Mystery, a final secret belying all other transcendent realms and beings equally. These transcendent beings' haxes are as esoteric as their level of existence, including such powers as trans-dimensionality, acausality, abstract nonexistence, transduality, omnipresence, omniscience, and more.
Explanations
Calculations
- Dagon and the Deep Ones sink an island - 11.9 Megatons of TNT (City level)
- Cthulhu causes an earthquake in R'lyeh that reaches New England - 427.82 Teratons of TNT (Large Country level)
- Nyarlathotep destroys the Earth - 866.628318 Yottatons of TNT (Large Planet level)
Supporters/Opponents/Neutral
Supporters
- Apex Predator GX
- ShivaShakti
- Dreaming Serpent
- Matthew Schroeder
- Saikou the Lewd King
- Ultima Reality
- Elizhaa
- HeadlessKramerGeoff777
- Gewsbumpz dude
- Sans2345
- Roachman40
- Edenstar
- Planck69
- Emirp sumitpo
- OnsokunoSonic
- EnnardTrap1987
- Ikhvagracia
- Zexer1
- Rafi BZ
- IdiosyncraticLawyer
Opponents
Neutral
Characters
Ultimate Gods
Ultimate Gods | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
The Blind
Idiot God |
The All-in-One and
One-In-All |
The Crawling Chaos | ||
Azathoth | Yog-Sothoth | Nyarlathotep | ||
The Black Goat with
a Thousand Young |
The Archetypes | |||
Shub-Niggurath | The Ultimate Gods |
Great Old Ones
Great Old Ones | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
The Sleeper of
R'lyeh |
The Father of
The Deep Ones |
The Spider God | The Dark God | |
Cthulhu | Dagon | Atlach-Nacha | Ghatanothoa | |
The Sleeper of
N'kai |
The Father of
Serpents | |||
Tsathoggua | Yig |
Ascendant Beings
Ascendant Beings | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Lord of The
Great Abyss |
Lord of Sleep | The Dreamer | ||
Nodens | Hypnos | Randolph Carter |
Cosmic Entities
Cosmic Entities | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
The Cosmic
Virus |
The Star Spawn
of Cthulhu |
The Children
of Dagon |
The Hunters
From Beyond | |
Colour Out of Space | Cthulhi | Deep Ones | The Shamblers | |
The Old Ones | The Floating Ones | The Projectors | Extradimensional
Predators | |
Elder Things | Flying Polyp | Great Race of Yith | Hounds of Tindalos | |
The Silent
Giants |
Servants of
Nyarlathotep |
The Fungi
From Yuggoth |
The Faceless
Dreams | |
Wolf-Like Mountains | Hunting Horrrors | Mi-go | Nightgaunts | |
The Formless
Amoeba |
Son of
Yog-Sothoth | |||
Shoggoth | The Dunwich Horror |
Discussions
Discussion threads involving Cthulhu Mythos |
General Discussion
General discussion thread for this verse |